


wearing our long wing feathers as we fly

by omphale23



Category: Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 08:13:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8883499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omphale23/pseuds/omphale23
Summary: It’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mortarsmayfall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortarsmayfall/gifts).



Llewyn started sleeping over at Jim and Jean’s, listening to the radio late at night and only stopping home to pick up the mail and clean clothes. He was listening when the announcer broke in and reported fires and explosions, and no one asked about Mike but Llewyn could see the pity in their eyes, so he slept with Jean and played his guitar and when he finally got a letter that said Mike was okay, that they were planning to regroup and keep going, Llewyn felt something in his spine relax. Just for a moment, he was proud.

He doesn’t write back, though. Where would he even send a letter, and what good would it do, he figures, and the summer passes. 

Mike comes home in July, and he’s quiet again, barely even angry when he finds out about Jean, but he stops sleeping in Llewyn’s bed, stops sleeping at all, as far as Llewyn can tell. He’s not really ever there, and Llewyn pushes and Mike goes along with everything, doesn’t even argue when Llewyn sends them both on a tour of hick towns and gritty cellar clubs. 

They get back as summer is threatening to bring fall. The city feels smaller, and colder, but their friends are happy to see them and Mike gives Llewyn his share of the tour money and says that he’s thinking of quitting the business, but Llewyn should make a solo record, he should try and make it as a solo act. They fight, again, Mike is stubborn and his mind is made up, but he’ll always be there for Llewyn, in the audience or the wings, and they won’t be Timlin and Davis yet they’ll still be Mike and Llewyn, no matter what.

Llewyn will wait for things to get better, and when Mike asks to borrow his coat one morning, smiles as he turns away to leave the room, he’ll believe they finally are. 

***

Mike got a letter from Miles Horton, the week after the record was pressed. Llewyn thought it was a stupid idea, because they were on the edge of making it, people were asking them to play shows on their own again and it was happening, really happening, this time. They were going to be something, he knew it, could taste it on the edge of sleep, and suddenly Mike wanted to haul halfway across the country to the middle of nowhere and play music with a bunch of strangers.

They take the bus to Highland, and they get a shared room and Mike lights up, like it’s Christmas and he’s just gotten a gold watch and a ticket to the Rockettes. Llewyn is—not nervous, not quite—less enthusiastic. He’s learning new tricks, and no one looks twice when he sits a little close to Mike and smokes too many cigarettes, but when Mike is off learning about solidarity and protest and the centuries of misery they’ve inherited, Llewyn’s never sure what to do with himself. It’s all very earnest, and he’s never been good at sincerity, not even when he really means it.

After three months, they’ll take another bus to New York and Llewyn will breathe in the soot and know he’s home. Mike will seem stronger, and they’ll make the rounds, bragging about the people they met and playing new stuff and it will be good, for a while.

And then Mike will start looking up schedules and making phone calls and Llewyn will argue with him about how dangerous it is, this idiotic bus plan, but Mike will be stubborn—Mike has always been stubborn, it’s one of the things Llewyn can count on—and they’ll still be speaking to each other when it starts but only barely. 

Llewyn won’t go to the station to see Mike off, but they were never that kind of friends.

***

It was five years of making ends meet and late nights and gigging for jazz clubs. Llewyn wasn’t unhappy, entirely, but he wasn’t sure what happiness felt like so how would he know, really. Mike—drifted, really, through the streets and alleys and Llewyn’s thoughts, at the oddest times. He would be home when Llewyn got in, dawn threatening and his clothes reeking of smoke and his pockets full of cash and leftover sandwiches.

And then, when Llewyn crawled out from under the covers, the apartment would echo with absence. 

They fall back into old patterns. Llewyn’s not in love, but how would he know, really. Mike’s warm and familiar and what no one knows won’t hurt them, so on the nights Llewyn can’t find a stage to fill they stay in and it’s good, it’s enough, and Llewyn never asks but he never refuses when Mike looks up at him and smirks, so much like ten years before that sometimes Llewyn’s breath catches.

In the morning, they’ll both wake up and lie in bed for a while, trying out harmonies and new songs, arguing over album tracks and counting up the money they’ve saved for studio time. 

At the end, they’ll save enough and cut a record, and it will all start to fall apart.

***

He was gone for almost a year, and signed out for the last time carrying a duffle and his coat and a handkerchief full of trinkets that he thought would make Mike laugh, so Llewyn was whistling as he strolled up to Mike’s apartment. 

No one answered the door. 

He’s not worried, at first, because Mike probably has a job or a date or is out buying groceries. But as Llewyn sits on the stoop, watching the neighborhood pass by, the shadows lengthen and the cops start looking at him with suspicion and Llewyn doesn’t regret not answering Mike’s letters, not really, but he thinks maybe it might have been a good idea to send a note that said he was coming home.

As the streetlights blink on, he packs up his bag again and takes the A train back across the river to his sister’s. The next few weeks, he floats into and out of the cellars and dive bars, but no one knows where Mike went or when he’ll be back, and Llewyn eventually stops asking.

It’s three months later that he’s walking out of another agent’s office with a brush off and a polite request not to come back, that Llewyn sees a familiar blond head turning the corner. 

He doesn’t run. It’s a fast walk, maybe a jog, but definitely not a run.

Mike’s thinner, pale, and Llewyn pushes him about the absence but Mike avoids his questions and Llewyn eventually stops asking. Mike’s mother died—one of the letters that Llewyn didn’t reply to—and the apartment has turned into a series of couches now that he’s back in town. 

Llewyn’s sleeping in his sister’s basement and the baby’s walking and talking and screaming at all hours of the night, so it’s not that long before they’re sharing a cold-water studio on West 187th. The eighth floor walk-up isn’t much, but they make do. It’s got a view of the bridge, and of New Jersey, if you stick your head out the window and crane your neck a little. Llewyn jokes about a room with a view.

It won’t be like old times. 

Mike will be quiet, and Llewyn will fill the spaces with words, talking to hear himself while Mike nods and shrugs and watches out the window for birds and people and clouds. 

***

Mike was Llewyn’s first kiss. He’s didn’t admit it often, or ever, pretended that it was Mrs. Landry’s daughter one night under a tree on Eighth, but really that came later. 

Mike tasted like cherry ice and neither one of them knew what to do with their hands and they both agreed after that it wasn’t anything like the movies. But they kept practicing. It wasn’t like there was anything better to do, not with all the older kids preparing to fight the commies and the girls too busy to talk to a couple of high school schmucks with skinny arms and not enough money for a car or even train fare most of the time. 

So they kept practicing, on the floor in Mike’s tiny bedroom, and they got better at it and eventually it feels a lot like the movies look, but then Llewyn’s father buys him a guitar and Mrs. Landry’s daughter notices him, finally, and Llewyn decides that there are better things to practice. 

Mike is still his friend, though, and he saves up and buys Llewyn a coat that is only a little too big, and together they start making the rounds of the basket houses, lying about their ages and passing a hat around to pay for Llewyn’s dates, Mike’s singing lessons. 

Korea is over by the time Mike turns eighteen, and Mrs. Landry’s daughter goes off to beauty school and stops answering the door when Llewyn knocks. They keep playing, though, and people are sitting in the audience and sometimes show up just because they want to listen to Mike and Llewyn, not just because the beer is cheap and Pappi doesn’t skimp on the drinks. 

It’s good, they’re good, and then Llewyn’s sister will get knocked up and his dad will throw him out of the house and Llewyn will get very drunk and sign up as a seaman and nothing is ever really the same.

 

***

Mike couldn’t swim. That was how they met, actually, on the beach at Coney Island, the only two kids who refused to go in the water on the hottest day of July. For Mike, it was self-preservation. For Llewyn, it was a protest against his father, who had once again missed his birthday but had left a gift behind when he shipped out this time. 

Llewyn’s mom said he should get used to disappointment, and it was a really nice gift and his mom hadn’t even been the one to wrap it this year, but Llewyn still refused to go into the ocean on basic principle. 

That was back when he still had principles, and before he had Mike. Llewyn didn’t think about it much.

So anyway, they’re the only two kids sitting on the beach, too old to build sandcastles and too young to show off to girlfriends by throwing themselves in the water. They talk instead. 

Mike’s new to town, with a mother who works at the shipyard and a father who shipped out to the Pacific in 1942 and didn’t come home. Mike’s supposed to be back in Kentucky with his grandparents, but something happened—Llewyn never does find out what, but Mike never goes back to Kentucky, not even years later when they’re right next door in Tennessee—and instead he’s stuck in the city with nothing to do. 

Llewyn has a lot to do—errands for the grocer, a paper route, collecting cans for one of his sister’s interminable Victory drives—and he’s not doing any of it. Because he’s protesting his life. He’s on strike for his right to not care about whatever he’s supposed to care about.

Mike says that’s stupid, that you can’t protest nothing, and Llewyn says he can if he wants and Mike’s stupid, and all of a sudden they’re kicking sand at each other and Mike’s got Llewyn in a headlock and Llewyn’s not crying, he’s NOT, he’s just got sand in his eyes, and then Mrs. Ginsberg from down the block grabs them both by the ears and they’re united in the unfairness of being treated like kids when Mike’s almost twelve and Llewyn’s only a couple of months younger. 

It will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.


End file.
